The present invention relates to a biomass producing system and in particular to a floating barrier network which will be used to contain aquatic plants, in particular floating aquatic plants which are members of the duckweed family, and maintain their location on the surface of a waste treatment pond or natural body of water.
There has been research conducted in an attempt to ascertain the feasibility of utilizing aquatic plants for the treatment of wast water and/or improve water quality. Separate research has been conducted to ascertain the feasibility of utilizing aquatic plants as a food source or cash crop. Most of this research has concentrated on the use of nonfloating aquatic plants. There has been very little research regarding the use of an aquatic plant for both waste water treatment and as a food source.
Recently researchers have turned their attention to the use of floating aquatic plants and in particular, plants of the duckweed family. The duckweed family of plants provide for a biomass producing system wherein unwanted nutrients are harvested from aquatic systems by means of bioaccumulation to treat waste water and/or improve water quality, and the plants harvested as a cash crop. The duckweed are particularly suited to this purpose as they are native plants to most of the world including the United States and have the capability of rapidly taking up nutrients from an aquatic environment to provide a food source with a high nutritional and protein content. The natural development of these plants has produced wild type strains which can grow throughout the year given an open water condition. In addition, these plants have developed a pest resistance which is missing in other cash crops. This natural resistance to pests makes these plants a nearly pesticide free and herbicide free operation.
The University of Louisiana has conducted research with the duckweed species. However. The research to date has been limited to very small ponds. In order to enable efficient commerical utilization of the duckweed species for waste water treatment or an entrophic lake system, the duckweed species must be capable of being utilized in large bodies of water. However, a floating aquatic plant does not attach itself to the bottom of the pond or other body of water and is subject to wave action on large bodies of water. The wave action will push the aquatic plants to a localized area thereby causing destruction of the plants and reducing their growth and reproduction efficiency as the surface contact with the nutrients in the water is reduced. It is essential that floating aquatic plants be evenly dispersed over the surface of the water to maximize their surface contact with the water and thus maximize their growth and reproduction.
The use of a multiplicity of ponds small enough to reduce the fetch or linear measure of area that the wind acts on to create waves such that the wave action is minimized, would be prohibitively expensive for the treatment of waste water on a large scale. In addition, the treatment of entrophic water systems in an efficient manner is not possible because of their fetch.
An efficient large scale commercial system utilizing floating aquatic plants and particularly members of the duckweed family for both harvesting unwanted nutrients and as a source of food for animals and humans alike, has not yet been developed to take advantage of these types of plants.
The present invention makes the large scale application of floating aquatic plants in the treatment of waste water and as a cash crop, economically feasible.